New Year and Belated New York Comic Con Retrospective (Plus Ponies)! · 7:33am Jan 1st, 2014
Happy 2014, everybody! My new year's resolution is to make more unnecessary blogposts to clog your feed to whine about not writing enough more to write more!
On which note, I have a 13,000 word document that is MOST of chapter 2 of Twilight Sparkle vs. The Equestrian Library Association sitting on a flash. I would really like the final wordcount to not be 15k, so in addition to finishing it up I may also try to cut down the stuff I've written... the writing process has been long and scattered enough that I definitely reused the same joke twice a couple of times, so that's a few words I can cut out, anyway. I've given up on time projections but it will not be forever!
Moving on! What better time than straddling New Years Eve/Day to wrap up some unfinished business and also postpone writing? So here is that New York Comic Con Pony Comic Creative Retrospective I promised a while back. Hit below the break for misadventures and artwork I got from pony and other artists!
Actually it was a pretty light con on the misadventures. Let's get straight to the meeting comic people business.
The artist alley at NYCC 2013 was almost wall-to-wall actual comic artists, which was shocking to me as more of an anime con person. Not that there aren't webcomic artists and suchlike at anime cons, but there were a lot of artists selling print versions of comic covers that I owned, among other things.
For instance, I am a big fan of the 2005 run of Blue Beetle (it's amazing and fun and heartfelt), so I uh... got this:
It's the original ink of a page from issue 28 of Blue Beetle, and it depicts a pretty great moment where Jaime (the Blue Beetle) realizes that the aged mad scientist he's been fighting isn't such a bad guy and the two just sort of sit on the curb and chat for a minute. Incidentally, I think one of us, either me or Steve Bird (the inker on that issue), got haggled in this transaction (he mentioned a "for instance" price when flipping past this page, then when I later asked about that page in particular, said $10 higher, then when I said I wasn't sure I wanted to go that high ended up going back to the original price... so yeah I'm not sure who came out of that on top).
Another highlight that had nothing to do with art was meeting Catherynne M. Valente, the author of the excellent Fairyland books, of which the first is The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. You can probably guess from that title that she is a writer after my own heart, and the Fairyland books are a great mix of Victorian-era style and wit with a good dose of sillyness and a postmodernist darkness lurking beneath the surface (and sometimes on top of it). Anyway I had only read the first one, but since I couldn't make it to her panel, I was second in line for the signing with her and the other panelists (not that there was a huge crowd), and I bought the other two books in the series (there will apparently be 5 in all). I could have been first in line but I feel awkward about being first in line so I waited for another person to start the line before joining... which also happened again later. Anyway, I'm friends with a girl who was at the fantasy writing workshop for under-20s Alpha while Catherynne M. Valente was one of the instructors, so I was able to say hi on her behalf. And I got confirmation that a line in the book about a certain kind of human visitor to Fairyland always having someone trying to pull them down off their horses was a reference to Tam Lin. And she was nice enough to sign all 3 books to me with cute book-relevant dedications.
The first one is my favorite--it's to the effect of "To Fedora, who begins with F, which is tremendously cute/funny if you've read Circumnavigated.
But you are probably here for the ponies, so let's talk about the ponies.
Towards the front of the artist alley (which was, as is pretty typical at these things, a giant warehouse-looking place filled with stalls) there was a whole aisle that was just everyone involved with the pony comics (to avoid contaminating the regular comic fans, as one of my friends put it. Personally, speaking as a fan of both superhero comics and ponies, I don't think superhero fans have anything to feel superior about, but whatever). Katie Cook, the writer for the pony comics was there with a complement of little watercolor doodles. This one caught my eye--
But then I saw this one also
Having cruised around and realized that she was also taking requests for similar-quality pictures for $5, I braved the CONSTANT, MASSIVE LINE that wrapped around the edge of the aisle and into the next one for a picture of Haydee, from Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, my favorite anime seires. As seen here:
Despite having no idea what Gankutsuou was, the ludicrously complicated patterns on all the clothing, my awkwardness around people whose work I respect, and the fact that I confused my right from my left when I tried to show her a reference image on my phone (which had another character in it), she did a pretty good job! (It was also very cool to watch her work, she was very fast)
The only thing I'd change about is that Haydee is smiling way too genuinely. I think Haydee is only capable of smiling wistfully in that show. She's a pretty sad/serious type.
Anyway, I also stopped in a few aisles down to see Amy Mebberson, artist of the Nightmare Moon pony arc and some other assorted pony stuff, as well as a wide range of Disney things. I did not expect her to have an accent! Which I couldn't place, because it sounded vaguely British but not. Turns out she's from Australia originally. I didn't say much to her, which I kind of regret, because she seems like a pretty cool person and she was nowhere near as busy as most of the other pony people (a pity, because she might actually be my favorite pony artist despite Price being pretty great. She, or whoever does her colors, agrees with me that Celestia ought to be white-white, not pale pinkish or whatever. This is not the only thing I like about her art but it's one that I remember).
She was taking commissions but for more of a like $40 range which uh... I could probably have done to be honest, considering how much I blew on art all told (do not ask). But she had some sketches and suchlike for sale, and I snagged this nice Luna... I'm not actually sure what she's drawn with, but it's pretty! I wouldn't think I'd like the green paper but it works (the colors may not have come out great).
I also met Mebberson's fellow artist and longtime partner James Silvani, who drew much of the Kaboom! Darkwing Duck comics! I actually had the 4th Darkwing comic with me at my hotel but didn't bother to bring it with to the con. So instead I bought his sketchbook, pictured in case you want to see if you can pick one up for yourself:
It's full of a bunch of great bits of cute crossover art--Daenerys Targaryen riding Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon, Batman and Darkwing tied together by a villain, etc. But my favorite, I think, (despite only having seen Lilo and Stitch since I got the book) was this:
Anyway I told Silvani what a big fan I was of the Darkwing run, and was sad it was over. He told me it wasn't cancelled so much as it just ran out its contract--but that it was possible there might be something else in the works for the property, which was exciting. I also asked if he wouldn't mind signing a book where pretty much every page already bore his signature, and he did this for me:
So that was very cool.
Which brings us to Andy Price. I do not have much of an Andy Price story to be honest. I thought for a while about whether I actually wanted a pony picture from him--he was also doing cheap commissions, but I was having a hard time thinking of anything in specific to ask for. Anyway it was the last day of the con and I thought I had a pretty legit idea so I wandered around and waited for someone else to start a line (Price wasn't there yet) so I could jump in a couple of people down and not be THE FIRST PERSON waiting. The line got insane shortly thereafter, so that turned out to be a good strategy. I was one of the people who was in Price's way when he did show up!
Anyway I dunno what was going on, but he seemed really irritable and not entirely thrilled to have 3-4 dozen people lined up for commissions on top of whatever else. Maybe he was tired. Maybe it was fallout regarding the death threats over Princess Twilight making her way into the comics. I dunno. Anyway I heard him laying down the law pretty hard for the guy in front of me in terms of what he was willing to draw but I didn't hear what--turned out he was just doing one pony in a portrait-format. Which, fortunately, worked with my idea--Twilight Sparkle as Sailor Mercury!
If he had been doing something more complicated I think I would have gone with Twilight using Sailor Mercury's goggles to speed-read with their data-analysis powers (or analyze something in particular) but I really didn't want to add to the complications at the time. I already felt kind of bad using my phone for a reference again (Price didn't know Sailor Moon, or at least didn't know that Mercury had the goggles--fortunately the woman helping him run the booth did. Not entirely sure who she was in retrospect... that sounds really rude when I put it like that, but I don't know it throws off my whole equilibrium when most everyone running a stand is actually famous in their own right).
In retrospect, it would have been a commission that would have been more up Mebberson's alley, since she's a Sailor Moon fan, but ah well (also it would have cost like 4 times as much... maybe one day).
But! While I was waiting for Price to draw my Twilight thing, I noticed this one shaded sketch he'd had on his table the whole weekend. I'd assumed it was there as an example but it turned out it was for sale, and well...
I mean, how could I say no? (For those who don't know, I'm very fond of noir. I even took a class on it my senior year. Though I would see Twilight as more of a Chandler fan rather than a Spillane... Chandler seems like the most literary-minded of the hardboiled detective writers.)
Anyway, so concludes my forray into art collection. I also picked up a neat poster for The Last Unicorn, a movie I... did not exactly like, but acknowledge was very pretty. The book may be much better--I have yet to read it, despite Peter S. Beagle being at like every con I've ever been to selling his stuff.
The showroom floor was pretty neat too--really most of my money went into art, but there were sights and purchases for the toy collector in me as well:
Anyway, so concludes my shameless showing off report on the cool people I saw and things I found at New York Comic Con. I'm going to Ohayocon in about a month, but I doubt there will be very much pony-related to share from that one. We'll see, I suppose!
And now, back to writing. I really want to finish this freaking chapter already.
(Now, does anyone know how the heck to display 6 postcard-sized pieces of pony art?)
Sounds awesome! As for the art, you could probably put them all on a single backing in a larger frame.
Very pretty...Twilight in Noir was a very good picture.
Put them together in one frame.
So, does the mad scientist surrender after that, or does Beetle let him go, or what?
1671768 You should go read Blue Beetle yourself and find out! Believe me, you won't regret it (probably--I do know ONE PERSON who does not like Jaime's BB run).
Also because I don't fully remember how it turns out. I'm also slightly misrepresenting the nature of how the story goes down in the name of "not spoiling the entire plot of the issue." The salient point "Jaime comes to understand that the guy he thought was evil is genuinely retired from his life of crime, and so the two of them just talk instead of fighting" is still there, though.
If you must know, though Jaime spends the issue thinking the mad scientist dude has come to get revenge on the new Blue Beetle using his genetically engineered supermonster. But it turns out that the supermonster is basically just his pet dog. The guy created supermonster animals back in the 40s, but after the original Blue Beetle killed one of them, he lost his taste for crime and has just been trying to stay under the radar ever since, taking care of the remaining monsters as his pets. So Jaime lets him off the hook, because the dog is basically not that dangerous as long as they keep him under control. Here's the page with colors and text.
Also, be wary of the more recent "New 52" BB series. I don't know much about it, but it sounds a lot less special, if not necessarily bad. For instance, the cool thing about the 2005 series is that Jaime gets his powers, gets mixed up in the events of the 2005 miniseries Infinite Crisis, and his story starts up when he's coming back from that. Only it turns out that because shenanigans, a year has passed back home, so he's been missing and presumed dead. So the first thing he does when he gets home and his parents are like "Where the heck have you been for a year?" is reveal that he's a superhero, because he trusts his family (and doesn't want them to think he ran off to join a gang or something). So from the start he's basically got one of the best supporting casts in comics, because his family and friends all know his secret and are all great characters who help him deal with being a teenage superhero. Anyway apparently the "New 52" reboot doesn't have him immediately reveal his secret and generally seems to be trying to be "edgier" which was something that the 2005 series avoided doing with great aplomb.
Though the first 5-6 issues are a little bit slow... they swap writers somewhere in there and it gets a lot stronger after doing that, although it's not BAD previously. It's also one of those comics that really enjoys having a legacy (he's the third character to use the name Blue Beetle), and which nods to the history of comics without being like "you must have read 40 back-issues of the 1980s Blue Beetle series to understand this." Like, for instance, I don't think the old mad scientist ever appeared in the 60s/70s Blue Beetle Comics, but the issue that page is from depicts him as a foe of the first Blue Beetle, Dan Garret. According to the inker they had originally tried to do the "set in the past" pages in the art style of the 60s comics (he was also selling the inks he did in that style), but they were turned down by the higher-ups and had to redo them, which is too bad.
1671295 1671439 That would probably work, although it's not the most elegant solution. Or at least it's not a particularly elegant solution, it might be the best one short of some sort of framed rolodex...
1671844
I've heard a lot of good things about that run of BB, but I have so many things to read already
1671844 Get it done nice enough, by a pro, and it will. I did something similar for some works I bought a few years ago.